/RANT ON

I also fondly remember when the OneWorld Forum on Flyertalk was just such a service - where information was shared among fellow-travelers.

This isn't done - at least in the open - anywhere near as much as it used to be, and it's to my mind a real pity. That TiredDoc framed his/her question as one that could best be replied to by PM is symptomatic of the problem.

Is the root cause that airlines really watch this forum like hawks, and by sharing info here, we're alerting them to opportunities they can extinguish? Are we just over-paranoid that this is the case - since the pricing we're discussing is anyway well-known to the airlines themselves? Who knows.

What I do know is that, increasingly often over the years, replies to perfectly reasonable questions from posters (across multiple Flyertalk fora) are some variant of: get a subscription to ExpertFlyer or KVS. While it's true that those two options are in the business of selling fare & availability info - the knee-jerk advertising of their services (instead of sharing of substantive answers) is a real drag, and hardly incentivizes participation.


/RANT OFF

When such fares are found they will be discussed here. I don't think anyone is keeping anything to themselves in respect of xONEx fares.

My question, which was really inappropriately raised as it was off topic, was more about covering the costs of an ATPCO all fares subscription rather than squeezing FTers for profit. :)

Well I for one would welcome a free source for this information; subscribing to a service like EF (or somehow getting access to a GDS where the fares are also listed) is annoying as hell, and a free source would be a great boon. Oneworld used to have a table on its website showing prices, but they pulled that due to the "all-in" rules I mentioned earlier.

I don't know that Oneworld watches this board like a hawk; if they did they'd surely know by now what we think of their POS online booking tool. :rolleyes: But they plainly DO react to information that is spread on this board (and other places) evidence the short-lived MRU, KRT and CAI AONEx and DONEx fares in recent years. In those cases I'm sure it wasn't them being talked about on FT, it was the flood of bookings that resulted. I once visited with one of the terrific people at Mindpearl in Cape Town (back in the boom boom South Africa xONEx days) who said that most of the people she saw buying RTWs ex-SA had some contact with Flyertalk, so I don't doubt for a minute the role this site might play.

I take issue with the sentiments expressed here
Good xONEx fares are still openly discussed in this forum.

The most recent example is from November last year - the ex-Egypt fares due to the devaluation of the EGP

Before that, it was the ex-MPM fares, which had been around for some time (and mentioned on FT). What changed about this time last year was (a) a further devaluation of the MZN and (b) the removal of the rule regarding buying in one country and starting in another (the fare had to be the higher of the two)

To my knowledge, there have been no "good" xONEx fares that have been hidden from the general FT community.

IMHO TiredDoc suggested a PM merely because s/he is a relative noob and doesn't know any better, not because it is symptomatic of anything at all.
(No insult intended TiredDoc)

pandaperth: I didn't mean to impugn the entire forum or its membership; it's just a feeling I've gotten that as fare information becomes harder to come by, the forum has, over time, become a less useful resource than it once was for overcoming the pricing opacity OneWorld prefers for these products.

Long ago, before there even was an online booking tool, this forum was a hive of activity, with members working together to piece together fares as best we were able. For example, recall spreadsheets by WearyBizTrvlr (2005-2008) or Sagy (2009-2012). When OneWorld stopped publishing the fares online (around 2012, I think), the tools stopped working... but also, it seemed that the information exchange in the forum also slowed.

Sure, there were excellent threads on the fares you mentioned (as well as ex-KRT, and others). And to be sure, my remarks weren't to take away from those positive examples.

But I think Gardyloo may be on to something... I guess it was around 2011/2012 when travel blogging really exploded as a mainstream thing, and the rapid dissemination of good deals perhaps led to more circumspect posting of same.

Whatever the cause, surely you'd agree there's less robust discussion now than, say, five or ten years ago...

Anyway, what set off my rant was the suggestion that if I wanted centralized information, there were places I could pay to get it (EF, or KVS). That's certainly true - but demoralizingly transactional.

do xonex fare really get published? it seems to me these fare just stick. all the good deals come from currency movement.

I have two hopefully mundane surface segment questions (that I am nearly certain have been answered previously, but I'm not easily locating):

1. Does a surface segment count towards the max number of flights in a continent? I.E. If I fly into JFK and depart from LGA, does that surface segment count against the maximum (6) flights within North America? [Obviously the surface segment counts against the 16 total permitted.]

2. Does a surface segment count towards that restricted number of longhaul flights in N. America, Australia, or between the U.K. and various countries? I.E. If I fly into JFK and then depart from SFO, does that surface sector (JFK - SFO) count against the limit of 1 nonstop or single plane transcontinental flights in North America?

TIA!

no and no. i believe

1. No.
2. No. However:

Working on my first DONEx itinerary and have a question I haven't seen answered yet: can I credit different segments to different partners or is it all locked to one?

Yes, no problem in principle.

Right. You have to be careful and detail-oriented regarding the logistics, but it's easily doable.

I have two flights that I am changing the date/time only (by only one day). BA issued DONE ticket but they are internal QF flights.

I am being told by BA that there is no availablity for the revised dates for either flight yet QF site shows them as being available to book for cash at the same cost as my original dates. [I'd also note that its a DONE fare but my original booking was in Y as there is no J on the routes in question]

Any thoughts on getting around this ?

Thanks

Can you tell us which flights?

DONE fares on QF may book into D, R, L, or B in that order of precedence:

Is one of those classes available on your desired segment in the LON sales city?

Weirdly the Booking Code Exceptions table has become detached from the BA DONEx fares series but you can still view it on the DONEx fares published by other carriers. This may confuse BA into assuming that D must be used.